Gathering keyword data from organic Google searches just got a little more complicated. Here’s what you can do about it.

What’s Changed

On October 18, Google switched search for their logged in users to SSL (HTTPS). At first, this may not sound like much of an issue, but because of the way URLs are constructed when searching with SSL, analytics tools can’t track the keywords used. This means that if someone who is logged in to their Google account searches for “Market Motive”, one piece of information will be missing. Yes, we’ll still know that the person came from Google; but we won’t know the keyword they used. (Remember, this is only for users who are logged in to their Google account when they do their search.)

What You Can Do About It

You've got a client who wants their videos online and optimized. But they prefer Vimeo to YouTube. Should you let them build their campaign on Vimeo? Recommend they  focus on YouTube? Or is a two-pronged approach in your client's best interest? That's this week's hot topic in the Market Motive discussion forum. And although I've already weighed in with the members on the forums, I thought I'd share my opinion here… Continue reading

How one online company is embracing the customer experience to instill confidence, improve conversions, generate referrals, and retain customers. Lately I've been studying some of the new models for promoting local businesses online ... daily deal websites in particular. I signed up for Groupon and Juice In The City deals and have been researching the types of businesses that promote through them. One offer on Juice In The City caught my eye. It's from a company called GoPhoto and… Continue reading

What makes you stay on an email subscription list?

I posed this question to a few of our own subscribers and the answers were both surprising and expected.

The reasons they stay on had little to do with the subject line or the time of day we send our newsletters -- we know these have more to do with the open rate. What keeps people subscribed boils down to one thing: The expectation of something valuable in the email.

In my email marketing course, I teach that there is a direct and inverse… Continue reading

Why domaining rarely works.

Ask an internet marketer "how many domains do you personally own?" Now ask, "How many have you developed?" Chances are the domains are simply parked, collecting dust. Successful domainers are like commodity traders -- 98% fail.

Why do domainers usually fail?

Because it takes work. The idea that a great one-word domain like Cameras.com guarantees direct type-in traffic (and truckloads of money) is a myth. So is domain parking. And revshare. It takes a tremendous amount of real effort, research, and development to bring a site up in value. In the end… Continue reading

Conversion specialist Bryan Eisenberg just posted a great list of 69 Free or Low Cost Tools to Improve Your Web Site :

http://www.bryaneisenberg.com/2009/09/free-tools-to-improve-your-website/

Here are a few of my other favorite tool lists:

SEO Guru Todd Malicoat's summary of "Tool Time With Todd" twitter sessions: http://www.stuntdubl.com/tooltime/

An older, but still functional list of SEO tools: http://www.seocompany.ca/tool/seo-tools.html

Of course, the seoMOZ tool sets: http://www.seomoz.org/toolbox

And then some excellent research tools from AdCenter Labs: http://adlab.msn.com/alltools.aspx My favorite is the Commercial Intent Tool.

Bookmark 'em.… Continue reading

Dear Google,

I used to Love your webmaster tools. You have lots of great features, like site map configuration, crawler diagnostics and top search queries and positions. But why must you tease us by pretending to report on incoming links?

Sure, you call it a "sampling" and carefully word your descriptions with phrases like "links we have available to show you."

If "Links to your site" is a sampling, and the basis isn't known or consistent, then what is the intended use of the report?

Case in point: Throughout 2009, Webmaster tools reports… Continue reading

Back on June 13, 2009 over 500,000 Facebook users managed to grab a Facebook Vanity URL as their own unique mark in the social media landscape. Now millions are grabbing the chance to have a distinct, indexable web address for a personal or business presence through Facebook.

In the first land rush, Facebook imposed some account age requirements to limit name squatting and the organization offered some allowance for trademarked names, but this also has ended.

As of last Monday, June 29, 2009, the account age restriction… Continue reading

Last night we noticed that Google dropped links from the Twitter Profile page for a significant number of web sites.

For our own web sites and our clients' sites, we monitor new links and links lost. It's a good practice for any SEO. More importantly, we monitor when Google recognizes or disregards incoming links to a website as reported in Google Webmastertools.

We've noticed these events seem to occur in clusters, and last night indicated that Google is thinking less of links from Twitter. In one sweep, Google dropped the Twitter Profile "URL" incoming link for every site we monitor.

Examples from a… Continue reading

We often talk about the Dream Team of Market Motive, and indeed they are. Here's a "way back" trip to my former dream team. Bryan of ZURB interaction designers just posted some images that remind me of the privilege I had to work with a highly creative and fun team at ClickTracks - back in the day.

Blue guy represented a web visitor in an analytics world, but grew to represent reports, products and promotions over time. We went a little overboard trying to come up with… Continue reading